Time limited "rent seeking" that feeds the technologists necessary to develop the technology. In the absence of IP businesses just rely on obfuscation to try to get the same effect, except now you don't have a patent application to read and can't take someone to court for stealing your years of research.
Except that it is used now to drive companies out of business. I honestly think that it has done more damage than benefit.
IMO If the funds used to prevent people from applying technology would be used to fund research instead, the gains would net at least zero.
Right now the benefits are localized to jurisdictions that don't care about IP. It is impossible to measure how much could have been gained from businesses that never existed due to uncertainty arising in the jungle of IPs.
> I honestly think that it has done more damage than benefit.
Then you will wind up with the Chitu/Chitubox issue where everybody puts encryption chips into their stuff to lock it down.
Moving everything to the cloud wasn't just about developer convenience. It had the side benefit for companies that their software couldn't be pirated anymore.
